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We here at the League want to thank YOU for sticking with us this first year as we blogged about books, dystopias, sci fi, and more. In order to thank you, want to give you a signed copy of each of our books. One subscriber to the blog will receive all the books!

Oh my heck, you guys! There are SO MANY new awesome bloggers joining us on The League for 2012! I think we might cause the Awesomocalypse just from these announcements.

And today is no different. Welcome YA dystopian author Gennifer Albin to The League!

Name: Gennifer Albin

Title: Crewel (Farrar Straus Giroux, October 2012)

Short Plot: In a world where women, designated as Spinsters, weave time, matter, and the very fabric of existence, a 16-year-old girl must maneuver secrets and lethal intrigue to uncover her destiny.

Favorite dystopian/sci-fi works: I'm a sucker for the classics. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. But I love The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, Matched by Ally Condie, and Cinder by Marissa Meyer, too. As far as movies? If it's based on a Philip K. Dick story or directed by J.J. Abrams, I know it's for me.

Why I write dystopian? It's the story I had to tell.

Whimper of Bang? I'm positive we're going to have a few bangs in there. Guns, nuclear weapons, asteroids, alien invasions, but at the end, there's only the whimper of it all fading to nothing.

More about Gennifer: Gennifer Albin has a degree in 18th century literature, which means she's read a lot of very old, very long books, but we won't talk about that. Nowadays she spends her times building fantastic worlds comprised of the people she'd like to go on adventures with, while wrangling two little ones. She writes for her husband who loves to read and doesn't mind paying her in delicious, home-baked bread and Indian food.

I am so freaking excited to have Genn on-board, and I cannot wait to read CREWEL. Find her online:

YA dystopian title: THE OTHER LIFE (May 1st 2012 in the US, February 1st 2012 in the UK)

Short Plot:

3 years, 1 month, 1 week and 6 days since I’d seen daylight. One-fifth of my life. 98,409,602 seconds since the heavy, steel door had fallen shut and sealed us off from the world

Sherry has lived with her family in a sealed bunker since things went wrong up above. But when they run out of food, Sherry and her dad must venture outside. There they find a world of devastation, desolation...and the Weepers: savage, mutant killers.

When Sherry's dad is snatched, she joins forces with gorgeous but troubled Joshua - an Avenger, determined to destroy the Weepers.

But can Sherry keep her family and Joshua safe, when his desire for vengeance threatens them all?

Because, as crazy as it might sound, dystopian tales give us hope. In The Other Life, Sherry is faced with abandoned, Weeper-infested streets when she leaves the bunker her family spent the last three years in. She must overcome her fear, fight for her life, take care of her family but she grows with the challenge. Dystopia gives us hope because no matter how dark or twisted or inhumane the future is, our protagonists don’t give up. They get out of their adventures stronger. If Katniss can survive The Hunger Games, what are we capable of? Can we maybe get past the little obstacles daily life poses to each of us?

No matter how dark, dystopian fiction gives me hope in the strength that’s buried inside of each of us.

Short plot: In Level 2, the liminal place between our world (Level 1) and heaven, seventeen-year-old Felicia Ward spends her days in her pod reliving her favorite memories - until she gets broken out by Julian, a boy she once knew who wants her to join a dangerous rebellion.

Favorite Dystopian Works: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Feed by MT Anderson, 1984 by George Orwell, Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness, and so many more.

Why write dystopian? The idea for Level 2 came to me years ago, but it wasn’t until I became obsessed with dystopians and then thought about Level 2 in that context that everything really clicked. I wrote the story I wanted to read – a dystopian afterlife thriller, but one that’s grounded by
realistic characters and “contemporary” memories.

I am thrilled and honored to introduce Mike Mullin as a new League of Extraordinary Writers member! Mike is a fellow Hoosier, an amazing writer, and an all-around extraordinary guy! Welcome, Mike!!!

Bio

Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really hoping this writing thing works out.

Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife and her three cats. ASHFALL is his first novel.

Title:ASHFALL (Tanglewood, 10/11/2011)

Short Plot: Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don’t realize that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying supervolcano. It has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, and it will erupt again, changing the earth forever.

Fifteen-year-old Alex is home alone when Yellowstone erupts. His town collapses into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence, forcing him to flee. He begins a harrowing trek in search of his parents and sister, who were visiting relatives 140 miles away.

Along the way, Alex struggles through a landscape transformed by more than a foot of ash. The disaster brings out the best and worst in people desperate for food, clean water, and shelter. When an escaped convict injures Alex, he searches for a sheltered place where he can wait—to heal or to die. Instead, he finds Darla. Together, they fight to achieve a nearly impossible goal: surviving the supervolcano.

Favorite Dystopian or Post-Apocalyptic Works: Other than those written by league members? ‘Cause seriously, I love all their books. I was pretty sure it was a mistake when they invited me to join. Anyway: Epitaph Road by David Patneaude, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Postman by David Brin, The Gone series by Michael Grant, World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness, Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Victor Gischler, Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer, The Windup Girl and Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi, Unwind by Neal Shusterman, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, Feed by M.T. Anderson, and Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

Why write dystopian? The idea for ASHFALL led me to the post-apocalyptic genre, rather than the other way around. In 2008 I was wandering through Central Library in downtown Indianapolis and saw Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. It’s an impressively sized book, but nowhere near large enough, I thought, to include nearly everything. So I checked it out, thinking I’d write Bryson a snarky letter about the stuff he’d missed. Instead, I learned about the Yellowstone supervolcano. When I discovered that no one had written fiction set in the aftermath of an eruption of that epic volcano, I knew I had to try it.

Title: Starters (Random House Children's Books, Delacorte, March 13, 2012)
Short Plot: In a world ravaged by war and genocide, becoming someone else is now possible. Sixteen-year-old Callie discovers the Body Bank where teens rent their bodies to seniors who want to be young again. When her neurochip malfunctions, she wakes up in the mansion of her rich renter and finds she is dating a senator’s grandson. It’s a fairy-tale new life, until she discovers her renter’s deadly plan.

Favorite Dystopian Works:Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, Across the Universe by Beth Revis, Wither by Lauren DeStefano, Legend by Marie Lu, Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Why Write Dystopian? My favorites mentioned above inspired me to imagine what could happen in my future world. When I’m writing, I tend to start with a character who is put in an unusual concept, and that’s what I did for STARTERS. I took our world today and projected current trends, magnifying them to support the narrative.

But the reason I do this is to build a context to hold a story with the potential for the strongest emotions. I want the reader to experience a roller-coaster ride of surprise, hate, fear and love but in a way that feels fresh. At this point, the term dystopian seems too limiting. I prefer science-fiction or futuristic thriller.

Whimper or Bang? T.S. Elliot said: "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." So...which is it: does the world end with a whimper or a bang?

I’m too much of an optimist to accept anything less than transformation.Online @

This week, we're celebrating the new members of the League! Each day we're posting a new bio of an author of dystopian and sci works. We hope this is a chance for you to find new authors and new books coming next year!

We'd also like to give you a brief idea of our new schedule:

December 5-9: Introduce new membersDecember 12-17: HUGE giveaway to celebrate our inaugural year!We'll be taking the rest of December off to plan for the new year and celebrate the holidays.January 2-6: First week of new members' postsJanuary 9-13: Celebrate the launch of A Million Suns by member Beth RevisJanuary 16-20: Celebrate the launch of Truth by member Julia KarrJanuary 23- February 3: New members' postsFebruary 6-10: Veteran members' posts

As you can see, we've got lots of new things planned! We're also going to be working on new graphics, new contests and giveaways, and some other fun features for everyone. So stick around, settle in, and help us celebrate the end of the world!

And please: help us give a hearty dystopian welcome to our new members all this week!

As the year draws to a close, we here at the League have been looking past this debut year with shiny eyes. For more than a year now, we've blogged about books and science, fiction and non, dystopian and space and more.

And next year, we want to make that even bigger.

So, starting next year, we'll be adding five new members to our ranks. They've all got new books coming out next year, they're all in the sci fi and dystopian YA genres, and they've all got awesome things to tell you.

The schedule won't change: we'll still be blogging Monday-Friday, a different author each day. We'll still be featuring books and movies and more, and we'll still be focusing on sci fi and dystopian works. But we're doubling our work forces and drawing in new members to keep everything fresh and exciting for you. The veteran members of the League will still blog, too, one week out of each month, so don't think we're disappearing!

Thank you all so much for reading, commenting, and sharing. We hope you've enjoyed this debut year, and we hope that you'll welcome the new members--who we're introducing tomorrow--with open arms. And to help celebrate the new authors joining our ranks, we'll be holding quite a giveaway soon...

Okay, so to wrap up second book week, I'm here to talk just a bit about my next book. It is a companion to POSSESSION, meaning it takes place in the same storyworld but is narrated by two new characters.

I think it's pretty clear from the jacket copy how the characters from POSSESSION fit into SURRENDER. I'm reading the book right now for the last time, checking for last-minute errors and word changes, and it's been so much fun!

So onto the book.

About the book: Forbidden love, intoxicating power, and the terror of control...

Raine has always been a good girl. She lives by the rules in Freedom. After all, they are her father's rules: He's the Director. It's because of him that Raine is willing to use her talent--a power so dangerous, no one else is allowed to know about it. Not even her roommate, Vi.

All of that changes when Raine falls for Gunner. Raine's got every reason in the world to stay away from Gunn, but she just can't. Especially when she discovers his connection to Vi's boyfriend, Zenn. Raine has never known anyone as heavily brainwashed as Vi. Raines father expects her to spy on Vi and report back to him. But Raine is beginning to wonder what Vi knows that her father is so anxious to keep hidden, and what might happen if she helps Vi remember it. She's even starting to suspect Vi's secrets might involve Freedom's newest prisoner, the rebel Jag Barque....

SURRENDER will be released on June 5, 2012. You can get the most up-to-date information about both POSSESSION and SURRENDER on Facebook. Add SURRENDER to your Goodreads list.

The second book in the MEMENTO NORA series comes out May 1, 2012. THE FORGETTING CURVE features some new characters (and some old ones) but, in my mind, it's a sequel. The events pick up several weeks after the end of MN.

Jacket Copy:

Aiden Nomura likes to open doors—especially using his skills as a
hacker—to see what’s hidden inside. He believes everything is part of a
greater system: the universe. The universe shows him the doors, and he
keeps pulling until one cracks open. Aiden exposes the flaw, and the
universe—or someone else—will fix it. It’s like a game.

Until it isn’t.

When a TFC opens in Bern, Switzerland, where Aiden is attending
boarding school, he knows things are changing. Shortly after, bombs go
off within quiet, safe Bern. Then Aiden learns that his cousin Winter,
back in the States, has had a mental breakdown. He returns to the US
immediately.

But when he arrives home in Hamilton, Winter’s mental state isn’t the
only thing that’s different. The city is becoming even stricter, and an
underground movement is growing.

Along with Winter’s friend, Velvet, Aiden slowly cracks open doors in
this new world. But behind those doors are things Aiden doesn’t want to
see—things about his society, his city, even his own family. And this
time Aiden may be the only one who can fix things . . . before someone
else gets hurt.